Jump to content

GSU&UT

Certifiably Surly
  • Posts

    3259
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by GSU&UT

  1. 3 hours ago, bolverk said:

    I've had that stupid motherfucking conspiracist, Zeus, on ignore for a while now but saw some of his insanity yesterday because he was being quoted. This board has woken up to a lot of the misinformation that gets spread around and has gotten better at identifying it, but that bullshit still gets floated around a good bit.

    That said, I realize that a lot of us have also taken the bait and reposted shit a time or two, including myself. But we also have posters, like Zeus, who are habitually guilty of it, whether they're idiotic rubes or deliberate shit smearers. Either way, I think it's about time that there be some retribution for pieces of shit who insist on posting garbage lies over and over again.

    This NYTimes article mentions at least a couple of the LIES that Zeus posted yesterday. This shit is dangerous, destabilizing, and has gone on far too long. Fuckheads like Zeus deserve no mercy and need to get the boot, because consistently reposting lies is not a legitimate form of political discourse on discussion board full of college-educated adults who happen also to be football fans. 

     

    Fake Images and Conspiracy Theories Swirl Around L.A. Protests
    Disinformation spreading on social media platforms has stoked an already tense situation.

    Misleading photographs, videos and text have spread widely on social media as protests against immigrant raids have unfolded in Los Angeles, rehashing old conspiracy theories and expressing support for President Trump’s actions.

    The flood of falsehoods online appeared intended to stoke outrage toward immigrants and political leaders, principally Democrats.

    They also added to the confusion over what exactly was happening on the streets, which was portrayed in digital and social media through starkly divergent ideological lenses. Many posts created the false impression that the entire city was engulfed in violence, when the clashes were limited to only a small part.

    There were numerous scenes of protesters throwing rocks or other objects at law enforcement officers and setting cars ablaze, including a number of self-driving Waymo taxis. At the same time, false images spread to revive old conspiracies that the protests were a planned provocation, not a spontaneous response to the immigration raids.

    The confrontation escalated on Monday as new protests occurred and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced — on X — that he was mobilizing 700 Marines from a base near Los Angeles to guard federal buildings. They are expected to join 2,000 members of the California National Guard whom Mr. Trump ordered deployed without the authorization of the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who normally has command of the troops.

    The latest deployments prompted a new wave of misleading images to spread — some purporting to show Marines and the military service’s weapons in action. One was a still from “Blue Thunder,” a 1983 action-thriller about a conspiracy to deprive residents of Los Angeles of their civil rights. It features a climatic dogfight over the city’s downtown.

    Darren L. Linvill, a researcher at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, said conservatives online were “building up the riots in a performative way” to help bolster Mr. Trump’s claims that Los Angeles had been taken over by “violent, insurrectionist mobs.”

    Dr. Linvill said the posts were also “a bit self-fulfilling.” “As they direct attention to it,” he said, “more protesters will show up.”

    James Woods, the actor who has become known for spreading conspiracy theories, used his account on X to rail against the state’s elected officials, especially Mr. Newsom, a Democrat. He also reposted a fabricated quote, attributed to former President Barack Obama, discussing a secret plot to impose socialism on the country, as well as a video of burning police cars that was from 2020.

    An innocuous photograph of a pallet of bricks, actually posted on the website of a building materials wholesaler in Malaysia, was cited as proof that the protests were organized by nonprofit organizations supported by George Soros, the financier who, to the feverishly conspiratorial right, has become a mastermind of global disorder.

    image.png.699b7e6454d4018bff7ea28ff1d19898.png

    “It’s Civil War!!” an account on X wrote on Saturday, claiming that the bricks had been placed near the offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for “Democrat militants.”

    X posted a Community Note pointing out that the photograph had nothing to do with the protests, but it still was seen more than 800,000 times. It was also widely reposted, including by several seemingly inauthentic accounts in Chinese.

    The online trope dates at least to the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. It reappeared in 2022 after a conspiratorial post by Representative Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican who suggested that bricks for a paving project near Capitol Hill were intended for violent protests after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

    “These days, it feels like every time there’s a protest, the old clickbaity ‘pallets of bricks’ hoax shows up right on cue,” the Social Media Lab, a research center at the Toronto Metropolitan University, wrote on Bluesky. “You know the one, photos or videos of bricks supposedly left out to encourage rioting. It’s catnip for right-wing agitators and grifters.”

    It also fits into the narrative that protests against government policies are somehow inauthentic. On his own platform, Truth Social, Mr. Trump also suggested that the protesters were “Paid Insurrectionists!”

    Numerous posts echoed unsubstantiated claims that the protests were the work of Mr. Soros as well as local nongovernment organizations or Democratic elected officials, including the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass. Some posts disparaging the protests were shared by accounts with deceptive handles that closely resembled those of official government sources or news organizations.

    Mike Benz, a conspiracy-minded influencer on X who last year claimed that the Pentagon used the pop star Taylor Swift as part of a psychological operation to undercut Mr. Trump, advanced an outlandish theory that the mayor had links to the Central Intelligence Agency and had helped start riots in the city where she lives.

    He based that simply on Ms. Bass’s role as a board member for the National Endowment for Democracy, the congressionally mandated organization formed during the Reagan administration to promote democratic governance around the world.

    Not surprisingly, perhaps, the theme was echoed by accounts across social media linked to Russia, which often amplifies content that discredits the United States. The Kremlin and its supporters have long accused Mr. Soros or the United States government of covertly sponsoring “color revolutions” to overthrow governments — from the Arab Spring countries swept up by mass street protests in 2011 to Ukraine.

    “It is nationwide conspiracy of liberals against not only Trump but against American people in general,” Aleksandr Dugin, a prominent nationalist in Russia, wrote on X on Sunday.

    Disinformation in situations like these spreads so quickly and widely that efforts to verify facts cannot keep up, said Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at Free Press, an advocacy organization that studies the intersection of media, technology and the law. She described it as part of “a much longer effort to delegitimize peaceful resistance movements.”

    “Information warfare is always a symptom of conflict, stoked often by those in power to fuel their own illiberal goals,” she said. “It confuses audiences, scares people who might otherwise have empathy for the cause and divides us when we need solidarity most.”

    Adding that one of the Craigslist postings that went viral for "hiring protestors" was literally part of a spinoff of a podcast I listened to where guys do prank calls. They made the Craigslist posting a day before all this shit popped off. They explain it at 9:00
     

     

    • Hook 'Em 2
  2. 12 hours ago, speed817 said:

    Just watched it this morning.....oh boy......

     

    Go watch The Majority Report on YouTube if you haven't. I haven't kept up as much since Michael Brooks passed, but Sam is literally the best person to debate idiots like these. Dumbass libertarians would constantly call into his show and he would eat them alive. Sam was my gateway into actually discovering my politics and moral compass in 2015.

    • Hook 'Em 4
    • Like 2
  3. 1 hour ago, Keef said:

    The IRS for years has wanted to do what most other countries do, which is calculate your taxes for you, send you a proposed return, and have you add on any random income they wouldn't be aware of (which for most of us is $0, since the IRS also receives a copy of your W-2s, K-1s, 1099s, etc.).  Republicans always block it.

    Right, don't most actual functioning countries basically file your taxes for you automatically and it's on you to look for any discrepancies? Seems like that would likely collect a shitload more taxes because of people fucking up, but yes the GOP is committing to making sure our ability to collect taxes is intentionally disrupted.

    • Hook 'Em 1
    • Rage+1 1
  4. I'm reminded of Eurohorn whining like a baby back bitch in 2016 when we were pointing out that Trump is a fascist. We're going to see education completely crumble between things like this and the DoE likely getting gutted. The wealthy white children will of course still get to learn how to completely bend the law to their will while Chuck Schumer shits his pants in public.

     

     

    • Hook 'Em 1
    • Like 1
    • Rage+1 3
  5. 1 minute ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

    Ok then maybe we can have a captcha that asks basic shit like did Biden win in 2020 or should Tulsi Gabbard be head of intelligence and based on how you answer determines your ability to post here. Something has gotta stop the flow of dumb. Ignore doesn't seem to work

    I barely post on here anymore, but completely agree that posters need to be routinely called out over this shit. We're watching Nazis openly stage a coup.

    • Hook 'Em 5
    • Like 1
    • Rage+1 1
  6. I'm so conflicted, I want Penix and this team to win so badly but I think Raheem and his staff aren't going to do shit in the playoffs or in the next few seasons.

    That being said Penix and Bijan are letting their nuts HANG.

  7. 55 minutes ago, Biggus Duckus said:

    If no upsets (based on overall ranking), we'll be playing Ohio State at the Rose Bowl, Texas in Dallas, and Georgia in Atlanta. Ouch!

    I live in Portland now and have several Ducks friends, I watch the second half of the game with a few. I'm not sure if I can swing it making it out there, but it would be so badass if Texas and Oregon met in the semi-final for the Cotton bowl.

×
×
  • Create New...